The Quality of Life Blog
More on Getting What You Want: The Living Wealth Plan
September 13, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
Continuing with my exploration of Jack Canfield’s Success Priniciples in my series: Mark & Jack.
As you may have noticed, it’s not working out to one a week either…so what? When I work though each of these principles and figure out what they mean to me and how I can integrate my expereinces into what I teach others, THEN I move on.
Last time time I broke the different areas of our existence (ya know … life?) into 9 areas, physical, mental, financial, etc. (Mark & Jack post No. 6) to be used as categories for goal setting, etc. You may have 5 or 16 or you might like 9. It don’ matter tah me … do your own thing.
Set goals in each of these areas, implement an action plan (a HUGE factor in success … some of us are AWESOME at making To Do Lists and never finishing) and move on to the next fun thing. Some of these can be brief. A Physical goal for example might be “exercise 4 times per week” and/or “weigh 175 lbs. by Dec 31 2009″).
Could be complex too as you figure out your financial goals for different phases of your life. I actually recommend this, SPECIFICALLY for financial goals. If you say, “I want financial independence by age 48″, that is not specific. It is much more realizable to look at the next 30 days, the next 6 months, the range of 6 to 24 months, 2 years to 5 years, etc. and identify things like net worth, cash flow, debt, hard assets, etc. for those time frames.
It’s OK to start with, “$2.5M liquid net worth by age 48″ but you will have to break that down to an action plan that is starts in immediately. Then, and this is the good part, you tie that into the other aspects of your Living Wealth Plan and figure out where that monetary wealth is coming from (vocational), what you need to do to get to it (mental, realtional) and who you have to be (personal, spiritual) to get there.
Someone once said that the best thing about becoming a millionaire is not the million dollars but the type of person you become along the way.
Now that’s a plan.
CAN You Decide What You Want? Sure You Can ….
September 6, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
The Mark & Jack series continues. This week I am helping you to figure out what you want (and dont want as it turns out).
What I do - and what I teach others - is to break things down into the different areas of their life that are important to them. In my book, The Wealth Manifesto, I use these as the different categories of wealth (or wellbeing) in your life. These are the ones I use (you may have different ones):
- Health and fitness (physical)
- Learning (mental)
- Relationships (relational)
- Service (charitable)
- Self-esteem / Self-worth (personal) Read more
This Book Will Help You to Lose Weight, Find True Love and Make Money
April 10, 2008 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
…not necessarily in that order.
Awhile ago a friend of mine told me that nearly all self-improvement books talk about one of three things.
Guess which three things? If you took notice of the title, that would be a good guess. These are all dimensions of your overall wellbeing, which along with anything else that is important to you, is how we decide if we have a high quality of life or not.
If you are overweight, it is easy to perceive your life as miserable. However, in all but the most extreme situations, you can do something about it.
It is very simple - Eat better quality food, less food in general and exercise more.
Dont have any friends? Not yet hooked up with your soul mate? What are you going to do? Sit around and wish that these people walk into your life? No, you have to be a better friend, you have to be worth someone wanting to know you. You have to like and love yourself before someone else will.
Dont have any or enough money? I have seen several instances lately of people saying (to everyone they know, everyone that is listening): I dont have any money, please give me some.
I dont know how that is working out for them … I doubt very well. I think of money as another form of wealth for which, like the other examples above, it is required to offer some kind of value for what you want. This goes back to Articles 2 and 3 about energy exchange and our inherent potential for wealth. If you want money, you need to offer someone value (in any number of different forms to get it). You need to invest it and take the risks associated with the return you expect on your investment.
No matter what kind of wealth you are talking about, you need both the desire to change and be able to make the decision to change.� Then you need to take action.
The nice thing about developing your Wealth Manifesto is that all aspects of your life, everything you want, can be attained using one systematic approach.
The Wealth Manifesto: Try it, you’ll like it!
Wealthy Goals
February 25, 2008 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
I want to talk about goals … look at it as a belated conversation about New Year’s resolutions if you will. A resolution is typically nothing more than a commitment to a goal. In my coaching practice, I often talk to people about how to get balance in their lives. They feel overwhelmed with work, don’t make enough time for family or themselves, etc. One of the first things I try to find out is what they do to identify goals. A high percentage of the people I work with actually do pay attention to their goals and have some kind of system they use to identify and track them. This is actually not that surprising. A good number of my clients are self-employed and as such have a higher than average level of motivation and have been working on self-improvement, increased productivity and such more so than the general population. However, it doesn’t matter how aware you are of what should be done, it’s whether you do it. The challenge is, that like many other things in our lives, its the tools you use that are the ones that count.
I have the same issues myself - I get into hyper busy mode and forget about the goals and routines I have committed to and just keep pushing through whatever is on my plate. I’m supposed to be setting an Read more
